Garza Family Memories

Happy Fourth!!!

2008-07-04T18:53:00.000-07:00

Everyone,

Let's take a moment to realize why we celebrate the Fourth of July and why it is important. I know its important because of the fireworks and the parades, and how we all get a day off (except for me).

But also remember how we got to have the fourth and those who made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure that our Fourth of July's will continue for many years and generations to come.

If you see a soldier, thank them. Our soldiers work hard so that you and I can go to sleep in relative peace. Not so many people in the world are so lucky. Yeah, I know there is a bunch of controversy and anyone who knows me, knows how I feel about it, but this is not the time for controversy and criticism. Our Freedoms and liberties were paid for with blood and tears.

Sorry for the downer of a post but it's important to say.

God Bless America and happy Fourth of July!!!

-Kenneth

This one is for you Jeremy!

2008-05-27T19:27:00.000-07:00

Hello world,

Long time no see. You see, I've been super duper crazy in the head busy. Between my full time job and the new business I am getting creating websites, and Ilana going back to work full time and Nicholas's End of Year testings, and taking care of a 4 month old, I've been busy.

But It has been a while so I thought I would pay a courtesy visit before I fall unconscious at my laptop.

Ilana and I just got back from celebrating our 1 year wedding anniversary. We had a great time, we went to Shorter, Alabama and played in a small BINGO casino they have there called Quincy's 777. Last time I went there we won $3000. This time we didn't win big, but we didn't lose big either. It was nice. We stayed in a hotel called Drury Inn & Suites. We got it on Hotwire for only about 45 dollars a night before the junk fees. The hotel upgraded us from a regular hotel room to a Suite for nothing. They said they were super slow that day and were hooking everyone up so they would come back and do repeat business. No problem on our part, we will go there again. You can CLICK HERE to see the pictures of the hotel room.

We took our camcorder and I made a mock video of Cribs with it. It was pretty funny. I will have it posted to the website when I have the chance to work on it. It might actually be a bit because video is a lot more needier than photos as far as getting them up and running.

I am thinking about switching from hosting my own videos and just uploading them to youtube and linking to them. I've had a few people tell me they are unable to play the videos due to missing codecs and things of that nature. Leave a comment and let me know what you all think.

Nicholas had a great year in school this year. He passed his CRCT, which is a test that all 3rd Graders have to pass in order to progress to the 4th grade. He also recieved some really nice awards. CLICK HERE to see an article about all that he accomplished this year (written by me and posted to the Garza Gazette).

Theres nothing more to really talk about. I'm getting very sleepy now and I hope that all of .... ZZZZZzzzzzzzz.....

I'm not lazy...

2008-03-08T20:08:00.001-08:00

... but I've sure been busy, with the new baby and all. I know everyone is desperately looking forward to my next post about all things Garza. I will do my best to put up a proper post shortly. But I am too tired tonight :).

Thanks for your understanding.

-Kenneth

Baby Gitters...

2008-01-13T18:41:00.000-08:00

Is Gitters a real word? This thing doesn't have spell check so I am screwed anyways. At this point in time the baby can come at any given moment.

For example:
Someone asks me, "Hey, Kenneth... when is the baby due?"
I say, "Any minute."

At which look at me like I am crazy and then go about their day like they didn't just ask me the same question the asked me yesterday.

I am getting pretty nervous. I am excited to say the least, but this is a big deal. I could be holding my new son tomorrow night. Or next week. Ilana, thinks the baby will never be born, but I have a feeling the time will come eventually.

Everyone is getting the gitters (again, someone fill me in on whether that is a word or not).

I'm so nervous I don't even know what to write about.

And there I leave it.

-Kenneth

The History of "Michael"

2007-12-07T17:53:00.000-08:00

I have many nick-names. All my friends call me 'Kenneth', and all my family calls me 'Michael'. My aunt affectionatly calls me 'Baby Mike.' My dad calls me 'Big Guy,' despite the fact I was a scrawny little runt when I was a kid. But he get's and 'E' for effort.

When I was in Kindergarden thru 2nd Grade, I was called Mike by all my friends.

It was a cool name, it rhymed with bike, which made for some even better nick-names. Mike the Bike was a good one I recall.

Michael was going strong in my younger life.

But in 3rd grade the impossible happened. I happened to have the distinct honor of being in a classroom with 4 other "Michaels." With me, that made 5 total. Can you imagine the horror. It was like my individuality went down the tubes. Mike the Bike didn't apply to just me!!!

So the teacher had a very ingenious idea (to her anyways). Instead of having 5 Michaels, she would have none, and refer to us by our "other" names. In my case it was Kenneth. My name being Kenneth Michael Garza, Jr. for all those that are staring at this post all confused and dreary eyed.

For the other Michaels this was not a big deal, because everyone could say "Michael" a certain way and each "Michael" would know who they were referring to. But, for me, this happened to be the first year I attended this particular school. So nobody knew me as Mike the Bike, or just plain Michael.

Everyone started to get to know me as Kenneth... and the rest is history. I could never go back to Mike the Bike. At this point it would just be lame. So now everyone knew me by "Ketchup Kenneth."

... I know it's not as cool as Mike the Bike, but it's really hard to work with Kenneth.

Now, lets be very clear about this. It's not Ken, or Kenny, but Kenneth. Why is that important??? Well, it's not, I just like Kenneth better.

A little side note, I recall a very interesting coincident. In the seat next to me was a girl that was crying. Her name was April. Yes... her birthday was in April if I recall, her parents were very original. But I digress. She was crying because this was her first day in that school as well. And she was upset that she didn't know anyone. Well it turns out that I recognized her from my Kindergarden class. And I told her that she shouldn't cry because I remembered her from Kindergarden. Well, being the skinny little runt that I was, she was less than enthused. But she eventually came around and finally started to feel better. Which was nice.

Now, finally to the reasoning behind this post. I have a guestbook on my family's website (www.garzagazette.com) and my Aunt Annie very lovingly put a little note on there about how she could never do the Kenneth name. So with that in mind. I dedicate this post to her.

By the way, no one but my brother and I call her Annie, everyone else just calls her Anne.

We love ya!!!

-Kenneth 'Mike the Bike'

Post-Thanksgiving Update

2007-11-26T17:14:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. My family and I did loads. First of all, on Thanksgiving, I was on call at work, which made me a bit nervous but thankfully (as the name of the day implies) I didn't get called. We had so much turkey it was unreal. And Yummy too. Ilana's mom promply made turkey soup after Thanksgiving Dinner (Give that woman a medal) in which I will be going home to enjoy tonight.

... I can't wait ...

Ilana and I made a Thanksgiving Salad. Which is always a bust. I mean... It's a salad :), the only reason I ate some was because I made it, and the salad dressing was home-made too. Next year I am making a Full-fat, full-sugar pumpkin pie with full-fat whip-cream.

I have to use terms like "full-fat" to let the normal people out there, that full-fat is not something we normally have in our house.

I blame Ilana for that.

In any case... I will be sure to do something like that. I will make it from scratch and it will be yummy.

Nikkie and Jason brought their Famous Mushroom caps (which are delicious), and Jeremy and Elana brought a fresh, home-made bread loaf. Of course, Ilana's parents made everything else, from the turkey, to the cranberry sauce. She was also kind enough to have a Shrimp Cocktail (which is abnormal as they are a Jewish Family).

After we pigged out, we sat around and chit-chatted, and had a grand ole time.

I had some of my family from Virginia down to visit. That was a nice surprise. I call it a surpise as my mom knew about the visit for about a month and she didn't tell me about it until the week before. Anyone who has ever tried to take a day off during the Thanksgiving weekend with only a week's notice will understand. That sucked. I had to work it out with my co-workers, but in the end I was able to visit with them on Saturday evening. They were smart and left back for Virginia later that evening. I heard that traffic on Sunday was horrendous.

My Uncle Tony, Aunt Nicole and my 3 little cousins, Anthony, Candice and LeAnne were all down. Anthony being 15 or 16 (I didnt ask) thought he could beat me on Guitar Hero, but I showed him. He thinks he beat me because the song he chose for us to compete at (which hes played before and I haven't) he got 91% accuracy and I got 87% but I nailed him to the wall score-wise.

Every other method of win-lose for Guitar Hero is based on score, so he thinks he won because even though he got a lower score, he got a higher percentage and that makes him the winner. I will let him have his little victory, but next time I see him... He will regret ever making the challenge.

After the GH controversy, we ate, my step-father, Danny made some steaks and those were good. I ate those without a fork and knife. (It was funny to see). In addition there was Corn, Baked Potatoes, Grilled Chicken, and some fresh bread. Not to mention my moms famous Iced Tea.

So.. I pigged out again.. and I probably gained about 10 lbs.

I have no regrets, though.

-Kenneth

The Baby is coming, the baby is coming!!!

2007-11-16T17:50:00.000-08:00

I feel like running around screaming it to the world. Not only am I super-siked. I am also super-freaked (as all expecting parents are I suspect).

I feel like we are ready but after about 10 seconds of thinking about it I realize how much needs to be done. I was speaking with Ilana about the responsibilities for the baby (as we do with most things, it keeps us from arguing about it later).

Ilana's Baby Responsibilies: Besides to give birth to our baby, she is responsible for feeding it. She intends to Breast-feed. Sounds like a good plan so far.

Nicholas's Responsibility is to read to the baby every night. Awwwww... it's so cute.

Kenneth's responsibilities.... Everything else.... ?????
Well I like a challenge.

Here goes nothing.
-Kenneth

The Mom, the baby and all things digital

2007-11-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Its been about 1 month since I posted last. My wife, Ilana, has been busy cooking away at our new baby. He's Kicking and flipping and everything. It's very amazing.

Well gotta run for now. yay

Dear Mr. Henshaw,

2007-10-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

When I was young I had a book that I really liked called Dear Mr. Henshaw,

Main character of the story was a boy, whos Favorite author of all time was Mr. Henshaw, and this boy was an aspiring author himself. It was suggested to him to write a daily journal to help with his writing ability.

The entire book was basically this diary this boy wrote, and all the entries were in a letter format written to his favorite author. Needless to say, 22 years later I remember the book very well and remember how fun it was to read over and over again. It was almost like reading someone's diary for real.

I wonder how the boy is doing???

I guess I am recalling it because I decided I wanted to enter a daily entry here about the family and the first line that came to mind was "Dear Mr. Henshaw," and I felt it was worthy enough to bore you to death with.

I could start a Book Club Blog with all the fun stories I read as a child, but this blog is about my family and our special moments together so here goes nothing.

Today was an average Tuesday. Ilana went to work, Nicholas went to school, I had the day off. (as I do every Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday.)

So, thank God I had an interesting antidote about a book I liked as a child, otherwise this post would have sucked.

--Kenneth

Our Wedding Story

2007-10-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

As I sit Here trying to figure out how I am going to use this blog for the benefit of all mankind. I see that there are many stories of myself and my family that have yet to be put here for all to see and read.

This story I am thinking of is the Wedding of Ilana and myself.

First of all, most people have to be divorced to have 2 weddings. That's not the case with us. We got married twice in one week. It's a fun story and quite amusing to say the least. Here it is... enjoy.

When Ilana and I decided that we wanted to get married, we did the most sensible thing we could think of. Decide on a place and time. Which I would think is normal. The place we decided was going to be the Emory Conference Center and Hotel and the time was going to be Saturday, May 26th around Noon (wedding never start on time so why bog you down with details).

We sent the date and time and place to our Jewish Cantor for approval and it was said that everything looked good. So we started running with this "full steam ahead." We were paying for reservations, and paying for food, and buying suits, and buying and making invitations, and mailing invitations, and recieving R.S.V.P.'s and everything. Everything was looking great.

and then....

We get a notice from our Cantor that the date and time was bad. Now, how this happened is still a topic of many heated conversations in the Garza household, needless to say that their was a misunderstanding about the date and time and it turns out that the date and time we wanted to get married falls on Shabbot (or the sabboth for all you non-jews). Now, just to put this in perspective, I'm not Jewish, my wife (then fiance) is. And after a few conversations she felt that she wanted a Traditional Jewish Ceremony and since I am not religious enough to come up with a good reason not to do it, we both agreed that would be fine.

Well, as you can imagine, tensions were high. But we came through it like troopers. Seeing as how we couldn't change the date or time of the ceremony we decided that we would have 2 ceremonies. A traditional jewish ceremony, and a "fake" ceremony (as my wife likes to call it) which would be the expensive one.

The traditional jewish ceremony (aka the "real" wedding) was held on May 24th at Ilana's Family's Temple. It was very small and presided over not by just the Cantor, but also the Rabbi as well. (We felt pretty special.)

The "Fake" Ceremony was a decent size and a lot of fun (not to say the other one wasn't fun). We also had a lot more people show up to celebrate with us.

[CLICK HERE] to see photos of the "fake" wedding.

The "fake" ceremony was presided over a very sweet Methodist Minister. It was very nice (with the minor exception that she called me Kevin instead of Kenneth during the reading of the vows... I mean seriously... I wrote it down for her in a script.... man!!!) Not that it was a big deal. Everyone thought it was funny and I am happy that they were happy.

Needless to say, My friends have started calling Kevin because of this incident. But I digress...

It was very nice. It turned out very beautiful and in no small part to some people who really went all out. For example, My (new) sister-in-law Nikki, Hand made EVERY SINGLE Boutineer (i cant spell) and coursage (again.. I cant spell) the night before the wedding. And Jamie, one of Ilana's closest friends, helped with the decorating on the morning of allowing myself and Ilana to get ready for the rest of our lives. And of course, Michelle, Ilana's Matron of Honor hand-made me and my son a Yamika to wear for the ceremony.

Overall it turned out real nice.

-- Kenneth

Baby Garza is on the way

2007-09-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

Yay!!! Ilana is pregnant. I am so excited I can barely handle myself.

As of the writing of this we are 21 weeks along, and he's kicking and twisting. The first baby ever to be diagnosed with ADHD or some other type of Hyperactive disorder.

Just kidding, I love the fact that he's active.

So we decided on the name, Benjamin but we haven't decided on a middle name yet.

If you have any ideas just let us know.

Thanks in advance.

--Kenneth

Family Blog Started

2007-09-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

Today I created this blog as well as my familys website. I am working hard on it and I hope it comes out as nice as it looks in my brain.

--Kenneth